On 3 June 2005 I sat in the Channel 4 newsroom watching a video of six young Bosnian Muslim men being taunted and then murdered in cold blood by members of a Serb militia called the Scorpions in a village near Srebrenica ten years earlier.

Their paramilitary tormentors sneered at their captives; they smoked cigarettes and cracked jokes; the cameraman complaining that his handycam battery was dying, urging the others to “get on with it.” 

The men and boys were forced to lie down with their hands tied before they were shot in the back. After watching the video, I put together this report:

This video contains images that some may find distressing.

Last night I watched another video in our newsroom, this time from Sri Lanka.

It was sent to us by a group of exiled journalists. It was chillingly reminiscent of the Bosnia video. 

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The UK ambassador in Kabul gave journalists in London a teleconference briefing today about the Afghan elections and it’s blown a bit of wind into the sails of a story The Times reported last week.

An employee of the independent election commission in Afghanistan told the paper that only 150 had turned out to vote in Babaji district, part of the area UK forces re-took in Operation Panther’s Claw at a cost of 10 dead and an estimated 150 wounded.

The problem is that the ambassador couldn’t rubbish the figure to us. It may be right. It may not.

The full figures are not now expected until 17-21 September and even that deadline could slip. Instead ambassador Mark Sedwill gave various reasons why turnout was expected to be low. read more

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The Justice Secretary Jack Straw, at a Guardian seminar, has implied that he would not have gone to visit Mr al-Megrahi in prison if the decision had been his.

It’s a nudge towards criticism of the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, going slightly further than other Cabinet ministers have dared to go in public.

There has been a lively discussion behind the scenes in government about whether to attack the SNP… I hear that the Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy in particular has been chomping at the bit to go for the SNP administration but has been reined in by the PM and others. read more

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Photographs of science correspondent Julian Rush, travelling with British astronaut Tim Peake to see the space shuttle Discovery launch.

Pictures courtesy of their cameraman, Dai Baker.

Lightning above the lauch pad postpones the Discovery’s first liftoff slot. read more

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I’m looking for someone to tile my bathroom; do you think I could get NASA to do the job?

I’m standing underneath the belly of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in the Orbiter Processing Facility at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The urge to reach up and touch the hundreds of heat-streaked tiles on the underside of the space craft a couple of feet above my head is almost impossible to resist. read more

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For years Gordon Brown would drop in on Ted Kennedy on his regular summer trips to the US. Brown could talk easily and in depth about the characters of US politics past and present.

In March of this year he announced an honorary knighthood for Ted Kennedy in a speech to the joint Houses of Congress. In April 2008, he chose to give what he hoped would be a defining speech about his vision of foreign policy at the JFK Library in Boston, introduced by Ted Kennedy.

The Prime Minister wrote a chapter in his first book on “Courage” on Bobby Kennedy, and is a politician, like few others in the UK, who knows and reveres the achievements of the Kennedy dynasty. read more

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Just back from Gordon Brown’s brief joint appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at No. 10. As expected, Gordon Brown didn’t budge when asked about the Lockerbie bomber’s release.

Asked if it was the right or the wrong thing to do he stuck to his line that this was a decision for the Scottish Government and though he didn’t say “no comment” that was the gist.

Mr Brown said he was “angry and repulsed” by the reception given to Mr al-Megrahi when he returned to Tripoli.

He said he made it “absolutely clear” to Col Gadaffi when they met in the summer read more

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Lehman’s bankruptcy changed the world.

It sent world economy into a precipitous decline that’s matched the Great Depression. It arguably changed the course of the US election. It was a violent economic event that will be debated for decades.

Much of the mystery surrounds the events of the weekend of the 13th/ 14th September 2008, when as one Lehman trader puts it ‘Lehman was put to sleep’.

There have been some excellent accounts of what went on at the offices of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the US central bank’s embassy on Wall Street. The US Frontline documentaries are superb.

Yet there is something missing from these accounts: the British angle.

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The Scottish Parliament looks like it is getting ready to debate the Lockerbie bomber release on Wednesday morning of next week – just after 9.30am.

The SNP will put down its own motion supporting the decision… the opposition parties are then expected to table an amendment attacking the decision and vote on that at the end of the debate.

There will NOT be a “no confidence” vote in the SNP government because the SNP and the Greens have enough votes between them to deny the combined opposition the two thirds majority they need to win a no confidence vote.

The opposition parties don’t want to be seen publicly pressing a button that doesn’t work. They do want to add to the SNP government’s discomfort and the theme of next Wednesday’s debate looks like being that the release of Mr al-Megrahi was “not in Scotland’s name”.

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